Category Archives: authors

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How to Talk Like Jane Austen

A better guide

A better guide, by shawnzrossi

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by shawnzrossi]

Today is Talk Like Jane Austen Day, an annual celebration of the publication of Austen’s novel, Sense and Sensibility, which while “not the first novel she wrote,” was the first she published.

How does one talk like Jane Austen? Here are 10 Austenite words to get you started.

baseball

“It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books–or at least books of information–for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.”

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1817

First up, a debunking. There are claims that Austen wrote about baseball decades before the official invention of the American pastime. However, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term baseball may refer to “any of various related games played with a ball and (usually) a bat, in which a player strikes the ball with the bat or the hand and attempts to run to one or more bases to score point,” and not necessarily American baseball. Furthermore, there were several earlier mentions of the word, starting from 1748.

catch (someone’s) eye

“‘What do you mean?’ and turning around he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, ‘She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.'”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813

To catch someone’s eye means to “to attract and fix; arrest.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the first recorded usage of this phrase was in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Eye-catcher, “an object or person that seizes the attention,” is attested to 1923, while eye-catching, “visually attractive,” is from 1933.

chaperon

“I am sure I shall be very happy to chaperon you at any time till I am confined, if Mrs Dashwood should not like to go into public.”

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 1811

Chaperon means “to act as chaperon to or for,” or to accompany. Austen’s was the first recorded “verbing” of the noun form of this word, “a person, especially an older or married woman, who accompanies a young unmarried woman in public,” or “an older person who attends and supervises a social gathering for young people.”

Chaperon originally referred to “a hood or cap worn by the Knights of the Garter when in full dress,” or “a name given to hoods of various shapes at different times,” and came to mean “one who accompanies” based on the idea that the older woman or person shelters the younger one like a hood, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

coddle

“Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and the children, and let me look as I choose.”

Jane Austen, Emma: A Novel, 1815

An earlier meaning for coddle is “to boil gently; seethe; stew, as fruit,” probably ultimately coming from the Latin calidium, “warm drink, warm wine and water.” The verb sense of “treat[ing] tenderly as an invalid; humor; pamper” was first recorded in Austen’s Emma. Mollycoddle, “to be overprotective and indulgent toward,” is newer, attested to 1870, with molly “used contemptuously since 1754 for ‘a milksop, an effeminate man.’”

Collins

“Coming down, she found a letter from Mr Pinckney. It had been forwarded by her grandmother from Ravenel and was dated at Wheeling. A ‘bread-and-butter’ letter – the English call it a Collins, after the respectable gentleman so named in one of Jane Austen’s novels.”

Frederic Jesup Stimson, In Cure of Her Soul, 1906

A bread-and-butter letter is “a short, hand-written communication to thank someone who has recently provided you with hospitality, usually dinner or an overnight visit,” where bread and butter refers to “hospitality in general.”

According to World Wide Words, the Collins letter is “a literary joke based on William Collins, an elaborately polite character” in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813: “The promised letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on Tuesday, addressed to their father, and written with all the solemnity of gratitude which a twelvemonth’s abode in the family might have prompted.”

coze

“Miss Crawford appeared gratified by the application, and after a moment’s thought, urged Fanny’s returning with her in a much more cordial manner than before, and proposed their going up into her room, where they might have a comfortable coze, without disturbing Dr. and Mrs. Grant, who were together in the drawing-room.”

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

Coze refers to “anything snug, comfortable, or cozy; specifically, a cozy conversation, or tête-à-tête.” The word made its first recorded appearance in Austen’s Mansfield Park, and was formed by associating, according to the OED, cozy, which originated around 1709, and the French causer, to talk.

itty

“I flatter myself that itty Dordy will not forget me at least under a week.”

Jane Austen, The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen, Volume 11, 1798

Itty, baby talk for something small, made its first appearance in a letter from Austen. Related are itty-bitty (1855) and itsy-bitsy (1890).

Janeite

“The term ‘Janeite’ was coined in 1894 in George Saintsbury’s preface to ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ and Rudyard Kipling wrote a story called ‘The Janeites’ in 1924, about World War I soldiers who get through the ugliness of trench warfare through their shared love of Austen’s novels.”

Rebecca Traister, “I Dream of Darcy,” Salon, June 27, 2007

A Janeite is a fan of Jane Austen and her writings. Other fan words include Trekker, Trekkie, shipper, Browncoat, and x phile.

sympathizer

“Mrs Weston, who seemed to have walked there on purpose to be tired, and sit all the time with him, remained, when all the others were invited or persuaded out, his patient listener and sympathizer.”

Jane Austen, Emma: A Novel, 1815

A sympathizer is “one who sympathizes with or feels for another; one who feels sympathy,” and is formed from the verb sympathize. Sympathizer’s first recorded usage is in Austen’s Emma, and has come to especially refer to “one disposed to agree with or approve a party, cause, etc.; a backer-up,” according to the OED.

tittuppy

“Did you ever see such a little tittuppy thing in your life? There is not a sound piece of iron about it.”

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1817

Tituppy, sometimes tittupy, means “lively; prancing; high-stepping,” or “shaky; unsteady; ticklish.” Its first recorded usage is in Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and comes from tittup, “to move in a lively, capering manner; prance,” or “a lively, capering manner of moving or walking; a prance.” Tittup may be “imitative of the sound of a horse’s hooves.”

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Atomic Bombs, Time Machines, and Lurve: Words from H. G. Wells

British writer H. G. Wells was born today in 1866. Dubbed “The Father of Science Fiction,” Wells was also “a prolific writer in many other genres.” But we know and love him best as the creator behind The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine. Time travel with us as we look back on 10 words and phrases Wells coined or popularized.

atomic bomb

“His companion, a less imaginative type, sat with his legs spread wide over the long, coffin-shaped box which contained in its compartments the three atomic bombs, the new bombs that would continue to explode indefinitely and which no one so far had ever seen in action.”

The World Set Free, 1914

An atomic bomb is “a nuclear weapon in which enormous energy is released by nuclear fission.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the phrase atomic bomb was first recorded in the above 1914 work of Wells.

Later terms include the shortened atom bomb – about 1921, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) – and even shorter A-bomb (about 1945). Real-life atom bombs were developed in the 1930s.

fourth dimension

“Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it.”

The Time Machine, 1895

The fourth dimension refers to “time regarded as a coordinate dimension and required by relativity theory, along with three spatial dimensions, to specify completely the location of any event.”

While the term had been in use since about 1875, says the OED, it was in Charles Howard Hinton’s 1880 article, “What Is the Fourth Dimension?” that the idea of time as the fourth dimension was first implied, and in Wells’s The Time Machine that an explicit connection was made between time and the fourth dimension.

heat-ray

“In the road lay a group of three charred bodies close together, struck dead by the Heat-Ray; and here and there were things that people had dropped–a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and the like poor valuables.”

War of the Worlds, 1898

Wells’s heat-ray weapon, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, was a precursor to the ray gun, a staple in science fiction which originated around 1923. X-rays, “relatively high-energy photon[s] having a wavelength in the approximate range from 0.01 to 10 nanometers,” were discovered in 1895.

invisible man

“I have walked through Moscow’s snowy streets and felt that I must be an invisible man as the pedestrians passed me by with apparently unseeing eyes.”

W.W. Chaplin, “Russians Friendly, But Just Try to Get Any Military Secrets!” St. Petersburg Times, December 21, 1942

H.G. Wells’s novella, The Invisible Man, was published in 1897, and the term, invisible man, is now used literally and figuratively to mean someone who cannot be seen or is willingly unseen. Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, was published in 1952. From an article by Eugene Kane in The Milwaukee Journal, September 7, 1986:

After that experience, I tried to find other writings by Ellison, but was frustrated by the lack of his books at libraries or bookstores. In a way, he himself became an invisible man.

lurve

“I am pleading the cause of a woman, a woman I lurve, sorr—a noble woman—misunderstood.”

The War in the Air, 1908

While lurve, an alteration of love, may seem like a modern term, it has long been a British colloquialism, says the OED, first recorded as a verb in Wells’s writings in 1908, and as a noun in 1937.

Lurve may be based on the rhoticity – the pronunciation of “the letter r … after vowels,” says Dialect Blog – of some British accents.

Rasputin

“My professional gifts give me a kind of Rasputin hold on one or two exalted families.”

Star-Begotten, 1937

Rasputin, Russian for debauchee, is the “acquired name” of Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, “mystic and faith healer who held sway over court of Nicholas II of Russia.” Wells’s seems to be the earliest recorded example of Rasputin used figuratively for anyone “felt to have an insidious and corrupting influence.”

scientific romance

“In many respects it began in 1894, in two rooms at No 12 Mornington Road (now Terrace), Camden Town, where Wells, having ditched his first wife, lived in adultery with Jane, his second, and secured his first contract writing ‘scientific romance’ for the Pall Mall Budget.”

Gerald Isaaman, “Books: Review – HG Wells: Another Kind of Life,” Camden New Journal, May 27, 2010

Scientific romance refers to both science of a speculative nature and what is now know as science fiction. Wells didn’t coin the term scientific romance, but his writings, along with those of Jules Verne, were some of the earliest examples.

Romance in this context means “an invention; fiction; falsehood,” or “a tale or novel dealing not so much with real or familiar life as with extraordinary and often extravagant adventures.”

sox

“He abbreviated every word he could; he would have considered himself the laughing-stock of Wood Street if he had chanced to spell socks in any way but ‘sox.’”

Kipps, 1906

Sox is an alteration of socks. The baseball team formerly known as the White Stockings were dubbed the White Sox in 1901, according to Slate.

time machine

“Godfrey’s time machine – also known as The Baseball Card Shop in Hoover – has proved resilient, transporting fans back and forth through the game’s history, even as many of his competitors have closed their doors during the past decade.”

Tom Bassing, “The Time Machine: Sports Memorabilia Shopkeeper Transports His Customers,” Birmingham Business Journal, July 27, 2003

A time machine is “a fictional or hypothetical device by means of which one may travel into the future and the past,” and first appeared in Wells’s 1898 novel of the same name. The term may be used literally or figuratively, as above.

time travelling

“I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback—of a helpless headlong motion!”

The Time Machine, 1895

Time traveling is “hypothetical or fictional travel at will to the past or the future, typically by means of a machine. . .or a wormhole.” The term first appeared in Wells’s 1895 novel, The Time Machine. For more time traveling words, see this list.

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O. Henry: The Gift of Words

O. Henry

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of American writer O. Henry. Known for his twist endings, the North Carolina native also coined and popularized many words. We’ve gathered ten of our favorites here, with quotations from the O. Henry stories the words first appeared in.

banana republic

“In the constitution of this small, maritime banana republic was a forgotten section that provided for the maintenance of a navy.”

Cabbages and Kings, 1904

The term banana republic – now perhaps more popularly known as a clothing store – refers to “a small country that is economically dependent on a single export commodity, such as bananas, and is typically governed by a dictator or the armed forces.” The term was coined by O. Henry as “a pejorative political descriptor” in Cabbages and Kings, stories “derived from his 1896–97 residence in Honduras, where he was hiding from U.S. law for bank embezzlement.”

cut the mustard

“So I looked around and found a proposition that exactly cut the mustard.”

“Heart of the West,” 1907

To cut the mustard means “to suffice; to be good or effective enough.” The phrase, according to World Wide Words, is likely “a development of the long-established use of mustard as a superlative, as in phrases such as keen as mustard.” Furthermore, in 19th century America, “mustard was used figuratively to mean something that added zest to a situation, and the proper mustard was something that was the genuine article.”

El

“Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring ‘El’ between the rows of reeking sweat-shops.”

“The Social Triangle,” The Trimmed Lamp, 1906

El is short for an elevated railway or train. “The Social Triangle” takes place in New York City, and refers to an elevated railway run by the Manhattan Railway.

get-rich-quick

“A get-rich-quick – excuse me – gang giving back the boodle!”

“A Tempered Wind,” 1904

Get-rich-quick schemes claim “to provide large profits quickly, with no realistic chance of success, in order to lure gullible investment victims.” In the above quote, the speaker, a newspaper man, is referring to unbelievable stories such as “a sea serpent wriggling up Broadway,” or a get-rich-quick gang giving back boodle, or money.

marcelled

“‘They wash the gold out of the mountain streams,’ says the brown man, ‘and fill quills with it; and then they empty ’em into red jars till they are full; and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba each—an arroba is twenty-five pounds—and store it in a stone house, with an engraving of a idol with marcelled hair, playing a flute, over the door.’”

“Supply and Demand,” Options, 1909

Marcelled means having the appearance of a marcel hairstyle, “characterized by deep regular waves made by a heated curling iron,” named for French hairdresser, Marcel Grateau.

megaphonist

“‘What’s eatin’ you?’ demanded the megaphonist, abandoning his professional discourse for pure English.”

“Sisters of the Golden Circle,” The Four Million, 1906

A megaphonist is “someone who uses a megaphone,” which is “a large speaking-trumpet of a conical form.”

motoring

“And there are passably good roads through the woods where we go motoring.”

“Rus in Urbe,” Options, 1909

Motoring is “the art of driving or riding in an automobile or motor-car; the sport of driving motor-cars.” By the early 20th century, mass production of automobiles had begun, thus aiding in the popularity of driving for pleasure. Motoring is also the lyric of a certain song.

short order

“There amid the steam of vegetables and the vapours of acres of ‘ham and,’ the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of ‘short orders,’ the cries of the hungering and all the horrid tumult of feeding man, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing winged beasts bequeathed us by Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent way like some great liner cleaving among the canoes of howling savages.”

“An Adjustment of Nature,” The Four Million, 1906

A short order is “an order of food that can be prepared and served quickly,” and was first attested as a noun in the above O. Henry story. The phrase in short order means “without delay” and originated around 1834.

side-kicker

“Billy was my side-kicker in New York.”

Cabbages and Kings, 1904

Side-kicker, a partner, was popularized by O. Henry around 1903, says World Wide Words, although the word is older than that, and comes from an even older term, side-partner. Side-kicker became sidekick in 1906.

spiflicated

“Bill is all to the psychopathic about her; and me? – well, you saw me plating the roadbed of the Great Maroon Way with silver to-night. That was on account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of what I wouldst.”

“The Story of the Young Man and the Harness Maker’s Riddle,” 1906

Spiflicated, “drunk,” comes from spiflicate, “confound, overcome completely,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary. Spiflicate is a 1749 cant word.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Fried Dough]

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Orwellian Soup

On this day in 1903, British novelist and journalist George Orwell was born. While Orwell “wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism,” he was best known for his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In celebration, we’ve rounded up 10 of our favorite Orwellianisms, words that Orwell coined or popularized.

Big Brother

“My, how you’ve changed, Big Brother. What happened to the sourpuss in ‘1984,’ George Orwell’s grim novel about a thought-controlled future? Gone are the piercing eyes and the perennial threat: ‘Big Brother is Watching.’ You’ve had quite the fashion update. I like how you dress in T-shirts and sweats, just like the proles. I like your boyish grin. No longer a tyrant without a name, you’re now Facebook’s founder and supreme leader, Mark Zuckerberg.”

Froma Harrop, “Big Brother is ‘sharing’ on Facebook,” The Seattle Times, February 10, 2012

Orwell coined the term, Big Brother, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, referring to “the nominal leader of Oceania,” the novel’s version of London. Big Brother is now also any “authoritarian leader and invader of privacy.”

crimethink

“What bothers me about this kind of secularism is that it sounds so much like ‘1984’ with its ‘Big Brother is Watching You’; inspections of people without warning; superior ruling group (The Inner Party), whose numbers are limited to six million; ‘The Ministry of Plenty,’ which actually inflicts starvation; the denial of human passion and the notion it would be ‘crimethink‘ for a couple to even dream about a third child.”

“1984 World,” The News-Dispatch, December 2, 1971

Crimethink, “the crime of having unorthodox or unofficial thoughts,” is another word Orwell coined in his dystopian novel: “All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word CRIMETHINK, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word OLDTHINK.”

doublespeak

“Robert Denham, director of English programs for the Modern Language Association in New York, says doublespeak contains a fair amount of propaganda, too. ‘We’re trying to hide what the real truth is about a situation by masking it behind some gobbledygook,’ he says. Many forms of the lingo are innocent but some are downright dangerous, he says.”

“Doublespeak terms not based on reality,” The Palm Beach Post, June 21, 1988

While often attributed to Orwell, he didn’t coin the word doublespeak, “any language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often by employing euphemism or ambiguity.” Also known as double talk, doublespeak was coined in the mid-1950s, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, modeled on Orwell’s doublethink.

doublethink

“So we’re left with the Orwellian concept of Doublethink: Holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says he will not reactivate offshore processing on Nauru because it won’t break the people-smugglers’ business model. . . .Yet in the same breath he says it is too harsh . . .As Orwell wrote: ‘To know and not to know.’”

“Doublethink on asylum seekers won’t fool anyone,” The Australian, June 7, 2011

Doublethink is “thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradictions and falsehoods, especially when used as a technique of self-indoctrination.”

duckspeak

“Duckspeak, of course, is the language celebrated in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ Characterized by mindless invocation and the repetition of slogans, it was the highest form of speech in Orwell’s nightmare demolition of the English language, Newspeak.”

Christopher Ketcham, “George W. Bush, the doubleplusgood doublespeaker!” Salon, February 10, 2004

Duckspeak, “thoughtless or formulaic speech,” is imitative of a duck’s repetitive quacking.

newspeak

“As in ‘1984,’ today’s agents of Newspeak play on the fears of concerned citizens over what’s ‘out there.’  The future, multiculturalism and anybody-not-like-us are presented as reasons for the nation’s apparent race toward political and cultural ruin. Newspeak’s high-priests present topics as black and white, right and wrong, liberal and conservative, in a manner leaving little room for any objective discussions of issues.”

Edward Dwyer, “Speaking Newspeak,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 14, 1994

In Ninety Eighty-Four, Newspeak is “the fictional language devised to meet the needs of Ingsoc,” or English Socialism, and is “designed to restrict the words, and hence the thoughts, of the citizens of Oceania.” In contrast is Oldspeak, which refers to standard English. By extension, newspeak is, in general, “deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public.”

Newspeak also gave us the combining form –speak, which can “indicate the language or special vocabulary of a group,” says World Wide Words. Examples include geekspeak, lolspeak, and adspeak. (More –speak words.)

Orwellian

“Critics on the left hear Orwellian resonances in phrase like ‘weapons of mass protection,’ for nonlethal arms, or in names like the Patriot Act or the Homeland Security Department’s Operation Liberty Shield, which authorizes indefinite detention of asylum-seekers from certain nations. Critics on the right hear them in phrases like ‘reproductive health services,’ ‘Office of Equality Assurance’ and ‘English Plus,’ for bilingual education.”

Geoffrey Nunberg, “Simpler Terms; If It’s ‘Orwellian,’ It’s Probably Not,” The New York Times, June 22, 2003

Orwellian means “of, relating to, or evocative of the works of George Orwell, especially the satirical novel 1984, which depicts a futuristic totalitarian state,” and is an eponym, a word derived from the name of a person.

prole

“Anyway, pureblood prole that I am, I was alarmed to find myself teetering on the verge of poshness because I know what prosecco is.”

Suzanne Moore, “Me, a pureblood prole, one of the new posh?” The Daily Mail, June 5, 2010

Orwell popularized this back-formation of the word proletariat, “the class of wage-workers dependent for support on daily or casual employment; the lowest and poorest class in the community,” which was coined around 1853 and came from the French prolétariat. Before proletariat was proletarian, coined in the mid-17th century. Prole is attested from 1887.

thoughtcrime

“British citizens will be extradited for what critics have called a ‘thought crime’ under a new European arrest warrant, the Government has conceded. Campaigners fear they could even face trial for broadcasting ‘xenophobic or racist’ remarks – such as denying the Holocaust – on an internet chatroom in another country.”

Philip Johnston, “Britons face extradition for ‘thought crime’ on net,” The Telegraph, February 18, 2003

A thoughtcrime is “a crime committed by having unorthodox or unofficial thoughts.” Thought police, “a group that aims to control what other people think,” originated around 1946, before Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, and was originally in reference to “pre-war Japanese Special Higher Police.”

unperson

“Nikita Khrushchev has become an unperson. For a week now there has been no public indication in the nation he long dominated that such a man ever existed. His picture has disappeared from public places. His books are no longer heaped in display in stores.”

“Khrushchev Is ‘Unperson’ In Own Nation,” Lawrence Journal-World, October 23, 1964

Orwell coined this term which means “a human who has been stripped of rights, identity or humanity.”

For even more things Orwellian, check out his essay on new words in English, and these lists, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Newspeak.

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Word Soup: James Joyce

This Saturday, June 16 is Bloomsday, an annual celebration of Irish writer James Joyce and his novel, Ulysses.

Want to join the festivities? Follow in Leopold Bloom’s footsteps and take a walking tour of Dublin. Learn about the Irish capital through an app that “maps the locations of James Joyce’s modernist novel.” Attend a readathon with “more than one hundred Irish writers [reading] consecutively over 28 hours,” or listen to BBC Radio 4’s “five-and-a-half-hour adaptation of the novel.” Read Ulysses in its entirety (finally) at the Irish National Library. Or just enjoy this roundup of ten of our favorite Ulyssesean and Joycean words.

honorificabilitudinitatibus

“Like John o’Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Honorificabilitudinitatibus means “the state of being able to achieve honors.” According to World Wide Words, Joyce borrowed it from Shakespeare, “who in turn borrowed it from Latin”:

I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;
for thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier
swallowed than a flap-dragon.

Love’s Labor Lost

But Shakespeare didn’t coin the word. Its first appearance, “in the form honōrificābilitūdo” was “in a charter of 1187 and as honōrificābilitūdinitās in a work by the Italian Albertinus Mussatus about 1300.” The word was also used “by Dante and Rabelais and turns up in an anonymous Scots work of 1548, The Complaynt of Scotland.”

inwit

“Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Inwit, meaning “inward knowledge; understanding; conscience,” was coined in the 13th century, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, and comes from in plus wit. World Wide Words goes on to say that the word “had gone out of the language around the middle of the fifteenth century” and “would have remained a historical curiosity had not Joyce and a few other writers of his time found something in it that was worth the risk of puzzling his readers.”

The phrase agenbite of inwit echoes Ayenbite of Inwyt, a Middle English “confessional prose work.” Ayenbite or agenbite is “literally ‘again-bite’, a literal translation of the Latin word meaning ‘remorse’,” says World Wide Words.

monomyth

“At the carryfour with awlus plawshus, their happy-ass cloudious! And then and too the trivials! And their bivouac! And his monomyth! Ah ho! Say no more about it! I’m sorry! I saw. I’m sorry! I’m sorry to say I saw!”

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Monomyth, a word that Joyce coined, is “a cyclical journey or quest undertaken by a mythical hero,” and today is most famously applied to Joseph Campbell’s concept in his writings about heroes, stories, and myth.

Mr. Right

“Be sure now and write to me. And I’ll write to you. Now won’t you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes along, then meet once in a blue moon.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Mr. Right refers to “a perfect, ideal or suitable mate or husband,” and, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, first appeared in Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. However, we found Mr. Right in this context (not as someone’s name) in what appears to be a song from around 1826:

Mr. Right! Mr. Right!
Oh, sweet Mr. Right!
The girls find they’re wrong when they find Mr. Right
There’s some love the young, and the young love the old,
There’s some love for love, and some love for gold.
Many Pretty young girls get hold of a fright,
And all their excuse is – I’ve found Mr. Right.

If anyone has any additional information on the origin of Mr. Right, let us know!

poppysmic

“Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Poppysmic refers to the sound “produced by smacking the lips.” The word comes from the Latin poppysma, says World Wide Words. The Romans used the word to refer to “a kind of lip-smacking, clucking noise that signified satisfaction and approval, especially during lovemaking,” and that “in French, it referred to the tongue-clicking tsk-tsk sound that riders use to encourage their mounts.”

pud

“For your own good, you understand, for the man who lifts his pud to a woman is saving the way for kindness.”

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

A pud is a “a paw; fist; hand,” but is also apparently meant as slang for penis, says the Online Etymology Dictionary. Pud is short for pudding, which originally referred to “minced meat, or blood, properly seasoned, stuffed into an intestine, and cooked by boiling,” also known as sausage. Pudding gained the slang sense of penis in 1719.

quark

“— Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark
And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.”

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Quark is a nonsense word that Joyce coined in his novel, Finnegans Wake. Physicist Murray Gell-Mann, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, applied quark to “any of a group of six elementary particles having electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, regarded as constituents of all hadrons.”

schlep

“Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

While Joyce didn’t coin the word schlep, which comes from Yiddish shlepn, “to drag, pull,” its first known appearance in English seems to have been in Ulysses.

Ulysses

“In ‘Ulysses,’ Joyce follows Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman, around Dublin through the course of one day in 1904 – June 16, a date that is now annually celebrated by Joyce scholars and admirers as ‘Bloomsday.’”

Herbert Mitgang, “Joyce Typescript Moves to Texas,” The New York Times, June 16, 1990

Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus, in Greek mythology, “the king of Ithaca, a leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War, who reached home after ten years of wandering.” The Odyssey and Odysseus gave us odyssey, “an extended adventurous voyage or trip”, or “an intellectual or spiritual quest.”

Ulysses contract

“The new paper takes precommitment strategies much further, advocating, for example, a ‘Ulysses contract’ — or a ‘commitment memorandum’ that spells out what to do when the markets move 25 percent up or down.”

Jeff Sommer, “The Benefits of Telling the Ugly Truth,” The New York Times, April 30, 2011

A Ulysses contract, says The Wall Street Journal, is a promise

not to act hastily in volatile markets. Just as Ulysses had his crew tie him down so he could resist the Sirens’ deadly song, Prof. Benartzi…would have investors promise not to overreact to sharp market moves in either direction.

Erin McKean says that Ulysses’s wife, Penelope, “also lends her name to a number of objects, including Penelope canvas (used for needlework), and to the verb penelopize, ‘to pull work apart to do it over again, in order to gain time.’”

Still jonesing for more Ulysses words? Check out this list and this one, and for more nonsense words like quark, check out this one.

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Elementary, My Dear Wordnik! Mystery Words

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Today marks the 153rd birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man behind Sherlock Holmes. To celebrate (and console ourselves over the end of the second season of the Masterpiece Mystery series), we’ve rounded up some words about mysteries and mystery solvers.

The word detective, which came about in the early 1800s, was originally short for detective police. Detective is the adjectival form of detect, which comes from a Latin word meaning “to uncover.” Tec is an abbreviation of detective that originated in 1879.

The origin of sleuth is less direct. The word, which has Old Norse origins, came about in the 13th century, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, and meant “track or trail of a person.” This sense of sleuth gave us sleuthhound, a kind of bloodhound, which gained the figurative meaning of “keen investigator” in 1849. In 1872, this sense of sleuthhound was shortened to sleuth.

Hawkshaw is American English slang and comes from the “name of the detective in ‘The Ticket-of-Leave Man,'” a 19th century British play. (A ticket of leave, in case you were wondering, is “a license or permit given to a convict, or prisoner of the crown, to go at large, and to labor for himself before the expiration of his sentence.”) Snoop, another synonym for detective, gained its mystery-solving meaning around 1891. It originally meant “to go about in a prying or sneaking way” and probably comes from the Dutch snoepen, “to eat on the sly.”

While the character Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887, it wasn’t until 1903 that sherlock came to mean “detective” in general. The phrase no shit, Sherlock, said when someone is being obvious, seems to have gained popularity in the 1980s. However, we did find a mention in a 1976 book, No Bugles, No Drums.

Gumshoe originated around 1906, and comes from “the rubber-soled shoes [detectives] wore,” perhaps because they allow the wearer “to move about stealthily.” Dick meaning detective “is recorded from 1908, perhaps as a shortened variant of detective.” Shamus, slang for a police officer or private investigator, may come from the Hebrew shamash, “servant,” referring to the “sexton of a synagogue,” and influenced by the Irish name Seamus, or James, “a typical name for an Irish cop.”

A skip tracer specializes in “finding people who have attempted to disappear,” with the idea of tracing someone who has skipped town. We couldn’t find an origin, though we did spot this mention in a newspaper article from 1930 about lexicographers and slang expressions: “Of course, I know without being told what a stick-up artist is, even tho yesterday I did not know what a skip-tracer was.”

Finally, private eye was first recorded around 1938, according to World Wide Words, and is “a pun derived from private investigator, via the abbreviations PI and private I.”

Usually where there’s a detective, there’s a mystery. Mystery in the sense of ‘detective story’ was first recorded in 1908. The word originally referred to ancient religious rites such as “purifications, sacrificial offerings, processions, songs, dances, dramatic performances, and the like” before it came to mean anything “of which the meaning, explanation, or cause is not known, and which awakens curiosity or inspires awe.”

A whodunit is “a story dealing with a crime and its solution,” while a howdunit focuses not on who committed the crime but how the crime was committed. Similar is a howdhecatchem, also known as an inverted detective story, which reveals the crime and perpetrator in the beginning, then focuses on how the perpetrator was caught by the crime-solver. In a locked room mystery, the crime is “committed under apparently impossible circumstances,” involving a “crime scene that no intruder could have entered or left, e.g., a locked room.” A procedural is so-called because it involves a sequence of technical details or procedures.

Hard-boiled meaning “callous” came about around 1886. The origin of the hard-boiled detective is unclear although we did find this citation in a 1925 issue of Collier’s Magazine. Hard-boiled fiction, which gained popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, is “ distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sometimes sex.” Noir is a type of crime literature that features “tough, cynical characters and bleak settings,” and is short for the French roman noir, literally “black novel,” a type of gothic fiction.

In cozy mysteries, or cozies, “sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community.” The crime-solvers are “nearly always amateurs. . .and frequently women” who are “well-educated, intuitive, and often hold jobs (caterer, innkeeper, librarian, teacher, dog trainer, shop owner, reporter) that bring them into constant contact with other residents of their town and the surrounding region.” The blog Traditional Mysteries does a great job researching the origin of the term, tracing it back to the early 1960s. The term may come from tea cozy.

For even more mystery words, check out this list of snoops, some perponyms, and these words noir.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by timofeia]

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Shakespeare Soup

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake

Today marks what is observed as William Shakespeare’s birthday. How will you celebrate? Perhaps you’ll talk like Shakespeare, or maybe you’ll conduct some computational analysis on the Bard’s plays. As for us, we’re Word Soup-ing some now-common words and phrases that Shakespeare coined or popularized.

bated breath

Shylock: “Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whispering humbleness / Say this: / ‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last?’”

Act 1. Scene I, The Merchant of Venice

With bated breath means “eagerly; with great anticipation.” According to World Wide Words, “Shakespeare was the first known writer to use” the phrase, and “bated here is a contraction of abated,” which means “reduced, lessened, lowered in force.” Thus, bated breath “refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing as a result of some strong emotion, such as terror or awe.”

be-all and end-all

Macbeth: “It were done quickly: if the assassination / Could trammel up the consequence, and catch / With his surcease success; that but this blow / Might be the be-all and the end-all here.”

Act 1. Scene VII, Macbeth

Shakespeare was the first to use this phrase meaning “the essential factor; the all-important element; the supreme aim.”

Brave New World

Miranda: “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, / That has such people in’t!”

Act 5. Scene I, The Tempest

The use of this phrase is ironic in both The Tempest and Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel: in the play, it’s used to describe the first strangers Miranda has seen, “drunken sailors staggering off the wreckage of their ship,” while in the novel, “Huxley employs the same irony when the ‘savage’ John refers to what he sees as a ‘brave new world.’” The novel also contains numerous quotes from Shakespeare’s plays.

foul-mouthed

Hostess: “So I told him, my lord; and I said I heard your grace say so: and, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is; and said he would cudgel you.”

Act 3. Scene II, Henry IV

Foul-mouthed is defined as “using scurrilous, opprobrious, obscene, or profane language; given to abusive or filthy speech.”

hazel

Mercutio: “Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes;–what eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel?”

Act 3. Scene I, Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare was the first to use hazel in reference to eye color, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. In the play, hazel refers to a “reddish-brown color. . .in reference to the color of ripe hazel-nuts.” Today hazel eyes may also be yellowish- or greenish-brown.

misquote

Worcester: “Look how we can, or sad or merrily, / Interpretation will misquote our looks.”

Act V. Scene II, Henry IV

Misquote, in this context, “to misread; misconstrue; misinterpret,” was first recorded in Shakespeare in the 1590s. Quote is attested to the 14th century and comes from the Middle English coten,”to mark a book with numbers or marginal references,” which comes from the Medieval Latin quotare, “to number chapters.”

Nick Bottom

“Nick Bottom is a weaver and a bottom was, at the time Shakespeare was writing, a skein of thread or a structure around which thread was wound.”

“Shakespeare’s Bottom,” The Virtual Linguist, November 9, 2011

Weaver-related definitions for bottom include “the cocoon of a silkworm,” and “a color applied to a fabric with a view of giving a peculiar hue to a dye which is to be subsequently applied.” As for the buttocks meaning of bottom, the Virtual Linguist says that “only dates back to the late 18th century, well after Shakespeare.”

odds

Prince of Wales: “I am content that he shall take the odds / Of his great name and estimation, / And will, to save the blood on either side, / Try fortune with him in a single fight.”

Act 5. Scene I, Henry IV

Odds meaning “the amount or proportion by which the bet of one party to a wager exceeds that of the other” and hence, the “probability or degree of probability in favor of that on which odds are laid,” was first found in Shakespeare in 1597. Odds is the plural of odd, which comes from the Old Norse oddi, “point of land, triangle, odd number.”

one fell swoop

Macduff: “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop?”

Act 4. Scene III, Macbeth

Shakespeare was the first to use this phrase meaning “in one stroke.” According to World Wide Words, fell here doesn’t refer to falling but to an old meaning of the word, “of a strong and cruel nature; eager and unsparing; grim; fierce; ruthless,” and comes from the Old French fel, “cruel, fierce, vicious.” Related is felon.

petard

Hamlet: “Let it work; / For ’tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.”

Act 3. Scene IV, Hamlet

A petard is “an engine of war used to blow in a door or gate,” or “a small paper cartridge used in ornamental fireworks.” World Wide Words says the word only survives in the phrase hoist with one’s own petard, which means getting “injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others.” Petard ultimately comes from the Latin peditum, “to break wind.”

puckish

“Mischievous behavior is called puckish ostensibly after Shakespeare’s Puck from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ but the Bard of Avon was following a folkloric tradition in which spirits called pucas caused trouble for travelers.”

“’Puckish’ lifted from Bard’s play,” The Deseret News, July 17, 1990

Puck probably comes from the Middle English pouke, “goblin,” which comes from the Old English puca.

salad days

Cleopatra: “My salad days, / When I was green in judgement, cold in blood, / To say as I said then.”

Act 1. Scene 5, Antony and Cleopatra

Salad days refer to “a time of youth, innocence, and inexperience.” Although it first appears in Antony and Cleopatra in 1606, “it only became popular,” says World Wide Words, “from the middle of the nineteenth century on.” The link between salad and youth is the color green, like that of “young green shoots of spring.” Today salad days also refers to “a period in the past when somebody was at the peak of their abilities or earning power, in their heyday, not necessarily when they were young.”

sea change

Ariel: “Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.”

Act 1. Scene 2, The Tempest

Sea change has the literal meaning of “a change caused by the sea,” as well as the figurative, “a marked transformation.” World Wide Words cites one of the first figurative uses occuring in 1877. We found one from slightly earlier, in 1861: “A year or two ago they would have foreboded nothing more than a straggling riot; but kings and people have undergone a sea-change in the interval, and such indications can no longer be safely set down at their old value.”

seamy

Emilia: “O, fie upon them! Some such squire he was / That turn’d your wit the seamy side without, / And made you to suspect me with the Moor.”

Act 4. Scene II, Othello

Shakespeare popularized the figurative use of seamy, “sordid; base.” This comes from the idea, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, that “the seamy side of a sewn garment [is] the less attractive, and thus typically turned in.”

swagger

Puck: “What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here, / So near the cradle of the fairy queen?”

Act 3. Scene I, A Midsummer’s Night Dream

Swagger, “to strut with a defiant or insolent air, or with an obtrusive affectation of superiority,” was first recorded in this 1590 play, and is a frequentative of swag, meaning “to move as something heavy and pendent; sway.” (A frequentative is “a verb which denotes the frequent occurrence or repetition of an action.”)

What are some of your favorite Shakespeare words and phrases?